Friday, December 19, 2008

"He was racing over pentatonic scales picking out every note with a level of technique I had never heard in him before – and I never heard in him afterwards. He was using grace notes and passing-tones, furious chromatic runs - I couldn’t keep up, and I was standing right underneath him. I had studied his playing for years – but not this. I had nothing for this. Forget both ends, he was burning his candle with a blow-torch, right in the middle."

Thursday, November 27, 2008

While you're giving it up to the Great Spirit for the corn and cranberrries this year, be sure to take a moment to give thanks for Plato Jesus, and the whopping TWELVE new installments of his informative series That's Newstastic! he's provided us in time for the holiday.

So tie that napkin around your neck and tuck in; they make their own gravy:

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

"He steps down from the stage, microphone in hand, grabs a chair and swivels it around, mounting it backwards in a move somewhere between the lead singer of AC/DC and Cher when she’s humping the cannon."

In Part 5 of The Gitter Cranicals, our humble narrator is invited to Keep On Rockin' in the Free World...will he accept?

Thursday, November 13, 2008

The essence of the story is this: the boy Liszt, who was studying with Czerny, gave a concert in the small Redoutensaal in April, 1823. A few days earlier he was taken, in company with his father, to Beethoven's house. There is an entry in the Conversation Book, probably written by the father:

I have often expressed the wish to Herr von Schindler to make your high acquaintance and am rejoiced to be able now to do so. As I shall give a concert on Sunday the 13th I most humbly beg you to give me your high presence.

Schindler wrote:

Little Liszt has urgently requested me humbly to beg you for a theme on which he wishes to improvise at his concert tomorrow. [Some words crossed out] humilimedominationemVestram, siplaceatscribereunumThema. [He humbly begs for the contribution of a theme, if you will be so kind.] He will keep it sealed until he opens it there...

The little fellow's free improvisations cannot yet, strictly speaking, be interpreted as such. The lad is a true pianist; but as far as improvisationis concerned, the day is still far off when one can say that he improvises...

Do come, it will certainly amuse Karl to hear how the little fellow plays.

After other entries. Schindler returns to the subject:Won't you make up for the rather unfriendly reception of the other day by coming tomorrow to little Liszt's concert?

According to Nohl and Liszt himself, Beethoven did attend the concert, and much moved by the boy's phenomenal playing, went onstage, lifted the boy in his arms, and kissed him. Liszt's own account of his meeting Beethoven is this:

I was about eleven years old when my respected teacher Czerny took me to see Beethoven. already a long time before, he had told Beethoven about me and asked him to give me a hearing some day. However, Beethoven had such an aversion to infant prodigies that he persistently refused to see me. At last Czerny, indefatigable, persuaded him, so that, impatiently, he said, "Well bring the rascal to me, in God's name!" It was about ten o'clock in the morning when we entered the two small rooms in the Schwarzspanierhaus, where Beethoven was living at the time,* myself very shy, Czerny kind and encouraging. Beethoven was sitting at a long narrow table near the window, working. For a time he scrutinized us grimly, exchanged a few hurried words with Czerny and remained silent when my good teacher called me to the piano. The first thing I played was a short piece by Ries. When I had finished, Beethoven asked me whether I could play a fugue by Bach. I chose the fugue in C minor from the Well-Tempered Clavichord. "Could you also transpose this fugue at once into another key?" Beethoven asked me. Fortunately, I could. After the final chord, I looked up. The Master's darkly glowing gaze was fixed upon me penetratingly. Yet suddenly a benevolent smile broke up his gloomy features, Beethoven came quite close, bent over me, laid his hand on my head and repeatedly stroked my hair. "Devil of a fellow!" he whispered, "such a young rascal!" I suddenly plucked up courage. "May I play something of yours now?" I asked cheekily. Beethoven nodded with a smile. I played the first movement of the C major Concerto. When I had ended, Beethoven seized both my hands, kissed me on the forehead and said gently, "Off with you! You're a happy little fellow, for you'll give happiness and joy to many other people. There is nothing better or greater than that!" This event in my life has remained my greatest pride, the palladium for my whole artistic career. I speak of it only very rarely and only to my intimate friends.**

It is almost certain that Beethoven did not attend Liszt's concert. This did not prevent a 19th century artist from picturing the scene: Beethoven, having climbed onto the stage, embraces the boy. "Beethoven's kiss," if indeed it was bestowed, was more likely given in his room.***___________________* At the time he was not living there.** Michael Hamburger, op. cit.*** SacheverellSitwell in his biography of Liszt writes: "it seems unlikely that Beethoven attended the concert. He was too deaf to derive any pleasure from another person's playing. He certainly did not give Liszt the theme he had asked for upon which to improvise. But, on the authority of Liszt himself, the story is true that Beethoven climbed upon the stage at the end of the concert, lifted him in his arms, and kissed him. This personal testimony cannot be lightly contradicted, although it has been argued by his detractors that the story was merely invented as an advertisement for the young virtuoso.

"It is sufficient that Liszt knew Beethoven and that on some occasion, in public or more probably in private, perhaps in the master's own house, Beethoven should have been so impressed by his playing that he embraced him. This possibility, that the episode took place in Beethoven's own house, is certainly in accord with the version of it that used to be told by Ferdinand Hiller, a musician who was one of Liszt's early pupils."

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How's that for some 19th century filth?

I got that from a book called Beethoven, Biography of a Genius by George Marek. Like all good filth, it was almost free--$0.25 to be precise. It's a thick one too--696 pages. Sure it's kind of stilted in its writing, but full of fun facts and anecdotes like the one above.

Right before I spent $0.25 on a 696 page biography of Beethoven, I bought a chicken (dead) for $1.98 at the supermarket. Maybe this deflation thing isn't so bad after all. At least a new austerity is new, right--new is cool, right? Besides, why would Time magazine lie to us?

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Getting back to that kissable little Liszt, raise hands, how many of you can play a Bach Fugue? Now, how many of you can play the same Bach Fugue in another key? Now, how many of you can name a club (pardon me, "performance venue") where there is a (working) piano? Now, how many of those "performance venue's" return your multiple e-mails asking, nay begging them for a humble slot their busy activity calendar--perhaps on a slow day not dedicated to puppet shows or workshops on how to turn broken electronic toys from the 80's into avant-garde musical appliances that anyone can play?

Not that there's anything wrong with puppets or Speak & Spells rising from the bottom of the toy box to be given a fleeting avant-hipster moment at the "performance venue."

Late breaking addition--at one point Obama had 333 electoral votes. Sadly that number didn't stick (I guess in the end the number is something like 338.) Anyhow, being the 44th president 40 years after that Kennedy situation, to be sworn in 77 days from now is enough numbers to give even the most lax of synchromystics plenty to think about.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

It's that time of year again. [Actually, it's about 12 days after that time of year...] It seems like September 15th was just yesterday. At least I got the costume made for the compost pile.

This Halloween I wanted to make a special costume for the compost pile, so I made some carrot juice and combined the carrot-grindings with some hair I brought home from the feed lot (the cows get a shave before they get branded.) I also brought home a lot of cow feces to add to the other manure, but that's all under the hair. Now is that a great low cost costume for the compost pile or what?

The Internet has been kind of boring me lately. Ever since Mwanji stopped blogging I haven't enjoyed this particular aspect of cyberspace as much as I once did. But that hasn't stopped me from being totally mesmerized by this whole stock market thing. Not that I have any money in the stock market or a retirement fund 401k thing anything gross like that, but seeing the squiggly line go down and to the right as it has for the last month gives me a real 1928-1932 kind of feeling.

Feelings aren't facts of course.

Before October is over, some Maoist self criticism is in order--but first a riddle:

Doods! We are all one! So when are we going to play some music together?

While I was ashamedly remiss in putting out any happy-birthday meme, I was on a conscious, intentional, focused, concentrated Dixon listening jag for a good solid week from the 2nd to the 9th. I put all the small group recordings into the carousel: November 1981, Son of Sisyphus, Vade Mecum (1&2) and Berlin Abbozzi.

Dixon is one of those artists where a small segments of his work (let alone the totality) stand as tremendous achievements. If those were the only records he ever made, Dixon would still be a central figure in our beloved improvised music. The two-bass thing--that was Dixon.

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For the last few installments, we have been taking hurt words from W. Jackson Bate's little gem The Burden of the Past and the English Poet, which for our purposes here might as well have been titled The Burden of the Past and the Improvising Musician in the Early 21st Century.

Unfortunately, W. Jackson Bate's book is no different than any other in it's ability to make me yawn a lot and do other things.

One of the other-things I did was make a small green house out of garbage to extend the growing season here in "so called" zone 5.

We'll get back to Bate, I promise--but in the mean time, let's turn our attention again to Adorno. Winter is coming. Bate's writing is just a little too sunny. Let's turn up the bleak-0-meter to 11 with some passages from Adorno's Philosophy of New Music. My copy is translated and edited by Robert Hullot-Kentor. It has lots of foot notes and is published by the University of Minnesota Press.

"The history of new music as a movement no longer tolerates a "meaningful juxtaposition of extremes." Since the heroic decade, the period around World War I, it has as a whole been a history of decline, of involution to the traditional. Modern painting's aversion to figurative representation, which in art marks the same breach as does atonality in music, was an act of defense against mechanized art merchandise, primarily photography. In its origins, radical music reacted no differently to the commercialdebasement of the traditional idiom. It was the antithesis to the spreading of the culture industry into its own domain. It is true that the transition to the calculated manufacture of music as a mass produced article took longer than did the analogous process in literature or in the plastic arts. Its aconceptual and nonrepresentational aspect, which has since Arthur Schopenhauer recommended it to irrationalistic philosophy, made it refractory to the ratio of salability. It was only in the era of the sound film, of radio and publicity set to music, that, precisely on account of its irrationality, it was entirely seized by society's commercial rationality. However, once industrial management of all cultural goodswas establishedas a totality, it also won control over the aesthetically nonconforming. In late industrialism, the superiority of mechanisms of distribution--which stand at the disposal of kitsch and bargain-basement cultural goods--together with the socially manufactured predisposition of the listener, brought radical music into complete isolation. For those composers who want to survive, this isolation becomes a moralistically invoked social pretext for a false peace. This characterizes a musical type who, with undaunted pretensions to modernity and seriousness, conforms with calculated idiocy to mass culture. Hindemith's generation still brought talent and skill to its efforts. Its moderation was evidenced above all in its entirely unprincipledintellectual compliancy, in compositions made to suit whatever the occasion, and finally in the liquidation of its contemptible program along with everything else musically discomforting. They came to their end in a respectable routinized neo-academic style. This reproach cannot be lodged against the following, third generation. The collusion with the listener, disguised as humanity, begins to disintegrate the technical standards that progressive composition achieved. What held good prior to the breach, the constitution of a musical nexus by tonal means, is irretrievably lost. The third generation does not believe in the solicitous triads that they write with a sly wink, nor are the threadbare means at their disposal themselves adequate for any music other than a vacuous one. These composers prefer to evade the rigor of the new compositional language that in the marketplace rewards the greatest efforts of artistic conscientiousness with utter failure."

Adorno, Philosophy of New Music, "New Conformism" p. 9 - 10

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"They came to their end in a respectable routinized neo-academic style."

Ooof! Withering!

So here's a question: Who, in our beloved improvised music, are the analogous heirs of Hindemith who are now riding out the apocalypse in the comforts and rewards that come from capitulating to a respectable routinized neo-academic style? Is that just a fancy way of saying "selling out."

Though he worked in academia, Dixon's style was never routinized neo-academic. Maybe that's why they didn't mention Dixon in that goddamn all girl drama academy's 75th anniversary vanity pamphlet. They did have a nice little feature (picture and write up) on Anna Gaskell, which was nice, especially since Anna Gaskell merely attended but did not graduate from Bennington College. Dixon taught hundreds if not thousands of students at that school for somewhere in the three decade range and nary a peep.

Is it petty to bring this up? Is it petty to bring this up if it is true?

Saturday, November 8, 2008

The short answer = joys outnumbered sorrows and while some members of the Arf Society do employ special pins and shirts to make their point, the organization as a whole as I experienced it isn't anywhere near as menacing as that tenacious historical prescident of another long since disbanded Unified German organization which also happened to employ pins and shirts as a means of getting their message across. Of course when the two are soberly and rationally compared, one can't help but find there really is no comparison, despite the occasional effort by Arf Society/Zappanale detractors to align their means and their mission.

The long answer as written by me may or may not be forthcoming--though likely not forthcoming as the decay of said event's resonance has been sharp and quick (for a number of reasons) and, as the maestro once said, "who gives a fuck anyway?"

Speaking of resonance, I did find the below quotes which harmonize with both my experience and themes explored thus far in this humble blog.

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The Second Temple, completed seventy years after the destruction of the First by Nebuchadnezzar, differed in four ways especially from the Temple of Solomon. Thoughabout the same in area, it was not sohigh. It was also less of aunit, being divided now into a outer and inner court. In equipment and decoration it was barer. Above all, the Holy of Holies was now an empty shrine, as it was also to remain in the magnificent Third Temple built by Herod. The Ark of the Covenant wasgone, and no one felt at liberty to try and replace it with a substitute.

W. Jackson Bate, p.27

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The truth is that like Scripture, or like any other comprehensive body of ideals, the classical can always be used for more than one purpose. If we can invoke it to help us in taking a particular stand (especially one in the name of form, order, or sanity -- qualities associated almost by definition with the classical, and especially revered as much during the long adolescence of post-classical Europe), there is also much that can be cited against us as soon as we begin to specialize too purely or narrowly within what we think is the classical example. Hence the classical so often proves a Trojan Horse when more restricted movements in the arts try to embrace and incorporate it for authority. More than what is wanted at the start inevitably emerges, and in time the gates of the city are reopened.Once the effort to reform -- to give a "new form" to or simply to cap -- the Renaissance achievement was really under way, other qualities of the classical (Greek now rather than Roman) returned by the middle of the eighteenth century to haunt the cultivated imagination: the great classical ideal of the moral function of art, and poetry in particular -- poetry as an educator of the mind and emotions; the rage of appeal in the audience it had touched and should touch; the range of genres -- epic, tragedy, and on down through the "lesser" types; the strong, widely shared national involvement in poetry and the other arts; the variety of characters portrayed in epic and dramatic form; the emotional immediacy of language; the imaginative strength of metaphor. Above all there was "originality" -- the power of "invention"; and, as Pope said in beginning the preface to his translation of the Iliad (1715), it is "invention" that especially "distinguishes all great genius."This was the dilemma that eighteenth-century neo-classicism inherited, and with which it was to live as it reconsidered its position throughout the remainder of the century. A dilemma, like any other form of challenge, can be fruitful, depending on how we react to it. In fact, if frankly faced, it can be one of the ways by which a movement stays alive, deferring -- even avoiding -- the senilities of self-congratulation and the irrelevance and thinness of defensive mannerism.

W. Jackson Bate, p. 36

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Moreover, it is absurd to say that there is anything properly describable as youthfulness in the American outlook. It is not that of young men, but that of old men. All the characteristics of senescence are in it: a great distrust of ideas, an habitual timorousness, a harsh fidelity to a few fixed beliefs, a touch of mysticism. The average American is a prude and a Methodist under his skin, and the fact is never more evident than when he is trying to disprove it. His vices are not those of a healthy boy, but those of an ancient paralytic escaped from the Greisenheim. If you would penetrate to the causes thereof, simply go down to Ellis Island and look at the next shipload of immigrants. You will not find the spring of youth in their step; you will find the shuffling of exhausted men. From such exhausted men the American stock has sprung. It was easier for them to survive here than it was where they came from, but that ease, though it made them feel stronger, did not actually strengthen them. It left them what they were when they came: weary peasants, eager only for the comfortable security of a pig in a sty. Out of that eagerness has issued many of the noblest manifestations of American Kulture: the national hatred of war, the pervasive suspicion of the aims and interests of all other nations, the short way with heretics and disturbers of the peace, the unshakable belief in devils, the implacable hostility to every novel idea and point of view.All these ways of thinking are the marks of the peasant--more, of the peasant long ground into the mud of his wallow, and determined at last to stay there--the peasant who has definitely renounced any lewd desire he may have ever had to gape at the stars. The habits of mind of this dull, sempiternal fellah--the oldest man in Christendom--are, with a few modifications, the habits of the mind of the American people. The peasant has a great practical cunning, but he is unable to see any further than the next farm. He likesmoney and knows how to amass property, but his cultural development is but little above that of the domestic animals. He is intensely and cocksurely moral, but his morality and his self-interest are crudely identical. He is emotional and easy to scare, but his imagination cannot grasp an abstraction. He is a violent nationalist and a patriot, but he admires rogues in office and always beats the tax-collecter if he can. He has immovable opinions about all the great affairs of the state, but nine-tenths of them are sheer imbecilities. He is violently jealous of what he conceives to be his rights, but brutally disregardful of the other fellow's. He is religious, but his religion is wholly devoid of beauty and dignity. This man, whether city of country bred, is the normal Americano--the 100 percent. Methodist, Odd Fellow, Ku Kluxer, and Know Nothing. He exists in all countries, but here alone he rules--here alone his anthropoid fears and rages are accepted gravely as logical ideas, and dissent from them is punished as a sort of public offense. Around every one of his principal delusions--of the sacredness of democracy, of the feasiblity of sumptuary law, of the incurable sinfulness of all other peoples, of the menace of ideas, of the corruption lying in all the arts--there is thrown a barrier of taboos, and woe to the anarchist who seeks to break it down!The multiplication of such taboos is obviously not characteristic of a culture that is moving from a lower plane to a higher--that is, of a culture still in the full glow of its youth. It is a sign, rather, of a culture that is slipping downhill--one that is reverting to the most primitive standards and ways of thought. The taboo, indeed, is the trade-mark of the savage, and wherever it exists it is a relentless and effective enemy of civilized enlightenment. The savage is the most meticulously moral of men; there is scarcely an act of his daily life that is not conditioned by unyielding prohibitions and obligations, most of them logically unintelligible.

H.L. Mencken. Prejudices: A Selection. (taken from) On Being American p. 99-101

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Let me say, then, that hereditary states which have grown used to the family of their ruler are much less trouble to keep in hand than new ones are; it is simply a matter of not upsetting ancient customs, and of accommodating oneself to meet new circumstances. Hence, if a prince is just ordinarily industrious, he can always keep his position, unless some unusual or excessive act of force deprives him of it. And even if he is dethroned the slightest mistake by the usurper will enable him to get it back..Since a prince by birth has fewer reasons and less need to offend his subjects, it follows that he should be better liked; if he has no extravagant vices to make him hateful, it is only natural that he should be popular with his own people.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Ladies and gentlemen lets have a big round of applause for Jeffrey Scott Schapiro! Absolutely the BEST post election wrap-up of the year. Gotta love that WSJ.

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And that, I promise, is the end of my "political blogging."

Thank Dog that election spectacle is over. Now we can focus on whether or not Beethoven kissed a young, "free improvising" Liszt and other quirky, coincidental connections between Adorno's prophecy and the so called "realities" of the improvising musician in the year of our Lord 2008.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

"Suddenly, the sheet is thrown off, and a monstrous creature leaps to its feet. It resembles one of those illustrated man model kits, all skeleton, ligaments, and sinewy musculature prominent without any covering of skin..."

I WATCHED THEM EAT ME ALIVE

The Men's Adventure Library's I Watched Them Eat Me Alive collects pulse-pounding pulp fiction and outrageous illustration art of man vs. beast in vivid full color! Edited by Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle, it's available as a 106-page softcover for just $9.95, and in a deluxe, expanded 126-page hardcover edition for $24.95. The expanded hardcover includes work by pantheon men’s adventure artist Samson Pollen and a long-lost tale of bloodthirsty crustaceans by SFWA Grand Master Robert Silverberg! Get it here.

THE LAST COLORING BOOK

MAP OF THE MOON EP

Map of the Moon delivers a volatile mix of zero-gravity noise pop and moon rock. Blissed, hazy shoegaze transmissions from space, synth rock and direct hi-energy indie pop, with uptempo rock and roll coming through on re-entry. Get the EP here.

BARBARIANS ON BIKES

Barbarians on Bikes is a different kind of release from The Men's Adventure Library. Oversized and all artwork, this one-of-a-kind visual archive rounds up three decades of vintage pulp magazine art featuring rowdy motorcycle action and outlaw biker gangs, most unseen since their original publication. With history and context by editors Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle, plus an afterword by crime novelist Paul Bishop. The deluxe hardcover edition includes an additional 20 pages of biker pulp art. Barbarians on Bikes is big, bad, and untamed. Can you handle the ride?Buy it here.

SIXTY, GODDAMMIT

Josh Alan’s first album in 15 years. Can you dig it? Atomic acoustic blues-funk-rock. Sixty, Goddammit? Ya damn right.

A HANDFUL OF HELL

New from the Men's Adventure Library, editors Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle present A Handful of Hell by Robert F. Dorr.

Aviator, diplomat, and historian, Dorr was uniquely qualified to write for men’s adventure magazines, bringing sweat-and-blood, nuts-and-bolts authenticity to his stories of risk, combat, and sacrifice. Best known today for his highly regarded historical works, Dorr’s stories for the men’s pulps also drew from jaw-dropping true accounts, as action-packed as any imagined by his hard-boiled peers.

DOLLAR HALLOWEEN

Photographs by Wyatt Doyle, author of Stop Requested.

Every year, faces of death crowd the aisles of dollar stores: Skeletons, ghouls, and rubber body parts, all manufactured cheaply overseas and designed and destined for the homes of the working poor of Los Angeles and elsewhere. The result of several years' work for photographer Doyle, Dollar Halloween is a catalog of the annual exhibition.

I'VE GOT HEAVEN ON MY MIND

You don't have to have faith to love Reverend Raymond Branch! I've Got Heaven on My Mind features twelve contemplative, inspirational recordings, including a cover of the Velvet Underground's "Jesus," composed by Lou Reed for the band's eponymous 1967 LP.

I've Got Heaven on My Mind is recorded and mixed by Todd Burke, and is produced by Wyatt Doyle and Mike McGonigal. All sales go directly to Rev. Branch's service efforts in the community.

TEACHER TALES

For 40 years, Mr. Kessler has taught English in the Philadelphia school system the way he knows best: Keeping his head down, not making waves, and counting down the minutes before he's home enjoying a few generously poured martinis. But a series of new acquaintances and bad decisions in his final year before retirement brings his world crashing down around him--tragically and hilariously.

Teacher Tales, the savagely funny debut from novelist Richard Adelman, is available now. Buy it here.

CRYPTOZOOLOGY ANTHOLOGY

From the Men's Adventure Library, CRYPTOZOOLOGY ANTHOLOGY tears into 13 long-lost tales of fist-to-claw encounters with Bigfoot, sea monsters, the Yeti, and cryptids both notorious and obscure. With contributions from luminaries like Sir Arthur C. Clarke and John Keel, plus full-color reproductions of pulp artwork that accompanied the stories' original publication in classic men's adventure magazines.

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